The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

A day of F1…

It’s been a pretty long day. I was writing until two in the morning back in Japan, and then we were on the road by six thirty, to take a train to Osaka. They call it a Limited Express, which I always think is a contradiction in terms, but it did finally deliver us into the darkest recesses of Osaka Namba Station, one of those places where Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson would get lost in more than just translation.

From there it was on the Rap:t ( no, that is not a spelling mistake) which is a splendid purple train (!) that appears to be wearing a Darth Vader mask instead of a cow-catcher. In Japan trains always arrive on time and so there was no great stress.

Kansai Airport is built on a man-made island off the coast is a monument to Renzo Piano’s skills as an airport designer. He was also the man who designed the now troublesome Ferrari windtunnel, but his airport still worked well and we were soon whisked skywards to Incheon by Asiana, an airline which seems to specialise in transporting Japanese old folks who are not experienced travellers and tended to wander around looking lost.

We could not remember the name of the station to which we needed to catch a bus – in order to catch a train to Mokpo – but a nice lady told us the best way to do things and we soon discovered that her idea was exactly what we were trying to avoid doing.

Anyway, we got an unwanted tour of Seoul and then the bus driver, who knew that he had some aliens on board who wanted to go to Yongsan Station, happily drove past the destination without bothering to tell us that it might be a good moment to get off.

Fortunately, after years of travel, we smelled a rat and did not get taken all the way to Pyongyang ( we figured he must have been an underground agent for the Evil North). This meant that some abuse was exchanged when we realized that we were not where we wanted to be… It seemed decidedly unfriendly to us. With time running out, we grabbed a taxi and made the station just in time and climbed aboard a haven of peace on wheels…

Or so I thought until, being deadline for a Japanese magazine, I tried to work and drink coffee at the same time and somehow managed to spill some under my computer. Oh joy! This means that the weekend is going to be entertaining, unless the poor machine starts working again tomorrow morning. I still have an iPhone and while this and ingenuity may not run to the full production of an e-magazine, it is certainly going to be a challenge! Next week I suspect I will be buying a new computer. I soon had experts all over the world helping me out (connectivity is brilliant, isn’t it?), but a Korean work colleague of my fiancée in Paris soon established by ringing Mokpo that the town is better known for sailors and whorehouses than it is for Apple stores. In fact they are thin on the ground throughout Korea: this being the land of Samsung.

The train arrived at Mokpo Station at 8.30pm, with the only other foreigner on the train being Christian Danner, a fine fellow and a speaker of much good sense. He joined us for the second part of the 3 hour 30 minute train ride, because he got bored with the man sitting next to him, farting too much. There are different rules of human behavior over here…

Mokpo is not a place you will find in many tourist guides. It’s a bit of a dump if the truth be told, and if Mr E bothered to come here and had to stay in one of the whorehouses that we are forced to live in over a GP weekend, he would probably call the race off immediately. Strangely, we did not meet anyone from CVC in the Venice Motel…

There is one half decent hotel in Mokpo which is almost filled with F1 people. I was offered a room there last week, but the idea of spending $750 a night, with a four night minimum ($3,000 for the race weekend) was more than we could stomach. So it was off to the docks… It is a truly marvellous irony that the local government spent huge sums of money to try to give the region a better age and then housed its visitors in knocking shops – with the tarts (sorry, relaxation professionals) being shipped out for the weekend.

Having eaten nothing much all day – and certainly nothing healthy – we looked around for a restaurant to eat at and imagined UK Health & Safety Executives running screaming from such places, their luminous jackets and silly hats, glistening in the neon glow that seems to be everywhere. We

Mr Tremayne decided to go to the MiniStop supermarket and live off safe ( unhealthy) things, but after a week of culinary adventure in Japan – you must try deep-fried chicken gristle when you have a spare moment – I was up for something resembling normal food and so I ended up in a local down-to-earth eating place.

I’m drinking beer called Hite (which would be perfect if it had an S on the front of its name) and I had a very adequate plate of fried rice, a gelatinous stew of some unidentifiable meat, plus the inevitable kimchi (half-fermented bits of cabbage) and crunchy round yellow radish of some sort. I ordered by pointing at a picture in the window. I’m feeling fine. F1 is not just Monaco. It is also this…

Now, I’m off to the MiniStop for some chocolate (when all else fails there is always chocolate) and then back to the whorehouse (sorry, I should have said “motel”) to blow-dry the computer.

OH! Do take pictures of the whorehose, whores, seedy sailors, and that marvelous houte cuisine… especially samples that the local population is eating…(Feed it to Vettel!) It would make for an interesting addition to the regular read that is seen after every race!

Joe, in a circumstance where your computer has any liquid damage, the best remedy is to seal in a bag of uncooked rice. Of course, itll have to be a large bag in your case but it could save you a great deal of money. While this is typically the solution for smartphones which have been dropped inadvertently into the loo, it could also work in your situation. Hoping for the best of luck mate.

I feel for you with your computer. My 1 year old grandson recently christened our MacBook Air with his supposedly leak proof mug. It was not noticed for some hours, by which time it was well and truly fried (or do I mean boiled). Given that it was three years old and we have a £300 excess on household policy, it was not worth spoiling our claims record.

Well Joe….at least you made us laugh….Regarding the computer, I hope that you removed the battery as soon as the accident happened to minimize further damages…..Take it easy, soon all will be over…Meawhile enjoy F1 in Gangnam Style!!!!

I am sure that a job in the political world or even in the financial world would hire on Simon134, he seems to have worked out what your statement is all about pretty quickly. He seems to be wasted in the motorsport world.

I have travelled in quite a few “exotic” locales as well, and being a westerner in Korea is simply not pleasant. The story of not being able to get somewhere because the bus doesn’t stop or someone sends you the wrong way… All sounds very familiar. Korea did have some nice things, but as a whole I’m sure never doing a holiday there.

Joe, Korean BBQ can be quite good though. The ones where you get the raw beef slices and grill them yourself on little copper grills.

Good luck with the computer. Best advice I’ve had for similar incidents is just to leave it as long as possible over a radiator and then pray to as many deities as you can remember when you do hit that power button.

Hey Joe,
Sounds like your laptop got soaked…one trick my cell provider gave me after my lhone found its way into a bowl of water for a quick dip was to place my iPhone into some rice overnight as the rice would soak up the water. Perhaps it works for laptops too…worth a try but may be a pain tapping the rice out of your keyboard lol.

Joe,
You made my day, with laughter.
A beer which is miss spelt and should have a S in front of it, and blow drying a computer, in a 5 star Motel or Hotel with some questionable lady management types. You do live the life, which I think many of us would love for a single trip. But not 20 times a year, still nice to read about it happening to other people.

So I will ask dear old Saint Nick for a copy of “Joe’s F1 travel Tales” as a Christmas present…..when are they to be published?

You should have messaged me! I live six minutes from Incheon Airport. What do you need, a new computer? Parts? Let me know asap and I’ll bring it down with me tomorrow night. Send me a personal message at my email. I’m following this post, so if you can’t get my email, just put up an urgent message to Chris.

I have to laugh about your comments on human behavior here. It’s so true, and sad.
People bumping into you as you walk is not considered rude here, as are many other things us foreigners would think rude.

If you like dark beer, “Stout” is passable…

Bool-go-gee is beef or pork, and not spicy. It’s the safest bet. “May-whoa?” is how you ask if it’s spicy. “Yay” or “Nay” means yes, “Ahn-knee” means no.

Bee-bim-bop is also a healthy, safe bet.

Let me know if you need help. I’ll send you my cell number if you want.

Hi Joe,
This is my first posting here, though I have followed your blog for some time now. A very interesting article about your experience. Its interesting to know what you guys have to go through to bring us the reports about F1. I had been on one of those buses from Incheon to Seoul and had experienced the same feeling of being lost as every building and bridge appears the same at night in that giant concrete jungle. Moreover, those bus drivers aren’t that helpful.

Hey Joe,
I am so looking forward to reading the blog for the rest of the weekend, the entertainment value is very good. I can almost feel the creepy crawlies in the love shack. I hope the computer is fine.
I do feel sorry you in that dump but it should make for good reading.
Stay safe

Joe ,
If you wrote and upload this all from an IPhone I am impressed and would not be surprised if you pull the rest of the weekends challenges off without the laptop! If it was powered up and failed with the coffee the prognosis is not good. If it was off and thoroughly dried then the odds are much better, especially if it was black and no sugar! Good luck!

Never,ever, let an architect design a wind tunnel. The working bits are best left to experts, the pretty building it sits in (I wish) can be left to the felt tip crowd. 🙂

I’m just a bit sensitive to this as I’m currently sat in the States next to 2 wind tunnels, doing some tests with some very good US engineers, whilst discussing the details of the design of a different wind tunnel with some french customers.

I’m not looking forward to the overnight flight back to LHR, so I do not envy Joe’s Globetrotting one bit.

Well, it’s semi-official. My mother in-law saw on Korean news tonight that this will be the last F1 race in Korea. The news here is heavily controlled, so I doubt that it’s wrong. Glad we decided to finally go!

I looked at the Korean used, and figured it out. They consider qualifying as three seperate races, with the actual race being the “final” race. The word used means “the last, and there won’t be anymore. My mother in-law took it literally.
Joe, it looks like you will be “blessed” with the honor of coming here for a few more years.

Joe – if you (ever) get back from your hellish weekend – we’ll ‘sponsor’ you a UK sourced fruity machine if you are interested – no strings, and certainly no journalistic concerns as we have no F1 links (well none yet – am waiting for Mr Dennis’s knock on the door).

I wholeheartedly recommend a lenovo thinkpad (used to be IBM). the keyboards have liquid drain holes for just such accidents…. Yes they look boring but being designed for work they are generally pretty tough and take a lot of abuse. Over the years my thinkpads has fallen off desks, hotel beds, cars and had more bangs than I could remember. The keyboard is comfy to use too which must be important for you.

There’s are reasons why they are on the space station.

The current X1 Carbon is a gem. Otherwise a T series. only the X, T and W series are worth looking at, the rest of the line up are consumer grade.

Nutshell, yes. But It’d be all the other stuff that’d drive me to distraction (on a Mac, as I use Win7 but otherwise Adobe a lot). Then there’s a lot of conventions and shortcuts you get used to. Heck, I get out of sorts on different keyboards on the same machine. But apart from that, there is no advantage the Mac has any more, not innately, anyhow. There’s plenty discussion out there also, how Apple “broke” their color management, from serious people I have read, also (consultants, printers, authors on color science . .) Not making claims myself, but that used to be their USP.

Joe, for online backup I’m starting to find Backblaze are not half bad and cheap as chips (their blog explains how they manage that), moreover they let you set your encryption and I got that to work with a Yubikey, so keyring – insert – logged in – done. Pretty sure one perk of my Adobe sub is I can just grab a new suite onto a machine in emergency, just a thought. I actually think the sub was far better deal than regular install prices.

Sure brings home what you’ve written before about giving an ounce of consideration to visiting journalists so they have a more pleasant than not time in the host country.

G’luck with computer. I once had water splash directly down my laptop through the apt. ceiling heat vent of all things (roof area clogged with snow, then melted management said). To my surprise it worked after drying and still going several years later. Key was apparently getting it to a tech to disassemble it so it could fully dry out.

When I first went to Brussels for a course at the Von Karmann watsit, I was given directions that used the parts of the redlight district as landmarks. I stepped out of Brussels Sud to find the said district had been bulldozed. 🙂

I guess this is the type of free promotional publicity Joe was talking about F1 media providing when he was denigrating foreign countries for their visa process. Or maybe negative publicity doesn’t factor in the equation in the F1 media bubble.

No, to an outsider who doesn’t know how things work here, the plans would have looked fantastic. They did, actually, but I knew better than to believe them.
Also, if I remember correctly, the race negotiations were less than easy. Something involving “pain” and “arse” I think…

Sounds like a particularly interesting day, to say the least.. It can be wrong to laugh at anothers misfortune, but when it’s written in such an amusing way it’s hard not too.

You would think that tracks would have helpers for the Journalists to help in such situations such as with your laptop.
If they are wanting good publicity then it would be best to keep the Journalists happy.

Hope the Lappy has had a happy ending.. Though maybe that is the wrong phrase to use considering where you are staying…

Yep you caused me to laugh out loud too – and then feel some real sympathy….. relaxation professionals… ha ha….. Isn’t there a GP in Thailand? that’s the place for real relaxation professionals…… Take good care, dear brother!

Who ate chinese junk food during travel?! English..:D Please try better authetic local vegetable plates, beef bbq and steamed sea animals. Mokpo is famous for that, named Hanjungsik and Han-woo bbq. And no beer no chocolates. They are (s)Hite to even Korean. Coffee Americano is ok. The fresh crispy air in azure sky is already free for you 🙂 Wish you luck with your computer and enjoy F1 in sunny Korea!

you are hardly the first with the coffee trick joe , fan heaters are best to try a dry out ; if it is fried when you try to start it up you may still be lucky and the hard drive is ok , in which case you can pull that , put it in an external usb box [ $5 maybe ] acquire another laptop of the same type [ ie windoze or apple ] , set that to boot from usb and the new computer will run from the old hard drive ; keep you going until you have a chance to get set up again
or am I overlooking the fact that , as an organised F1 journalist ,you already have everything back up on an external usb drive slipped into your suitcase

if you don’t fancy doing it yourself any computer specialist can do it in 15 minutes…maybe they have them in korea ? lol

I seem to recall Richard Noble reversed over his laptop sometime during the Thrust SSC project, and the IT guy managed to extract and rescue the hard drive. I expect DT was there. “See one, do one, teach one” as they say at medical school…

Hard drives themselves are amzingly robust bits of kit. Huge amounts of data was rescued from hard drives at the World Trade Center, it’s amazing what they can withstand.

Apparently the only way to be truly sure that data can’t be recovered is to separate the disks from the spindle as the precise alignment is essential and almost irreproducible. Having tried it myself, this is bloody hard work, you’ll need a hole-cutter for your drill which is wider than the spindle (and bearings) to stand much of a chance.

Joe, I agree with everyone else that your comments make for entertaining reading – long may it continue while you escape the regular hotel staff.

I can only hope that you can manage to fit a TV/film crew into your travels as it sounds like a perfect subject for a fly (bloody big crew type) on the wall doc on the travels in these unusual locations for a European. It reminds me of the Clive James, a great Aussie whose entertaining shows on UK TV had a similar style of comments.

BTW, congratulations on your engagement – I hadn’t seen this previously. Any plans for an audience with Joe in France for the celebration & story telling for the big event? The storeys should not be missed & “le vin rouge” should not be missed!

I realise you’re there to do a job and the setting might not be ideal, but sometimes I can’t help but feel that the adventure of travel is wasted on the F1 brigade. Surely the world is a better place for it’s diversity, and locations like this.

Mokpo is a great little town (though I admit I do find it totally incongruous with the image of F1), and the food is fantastic. It’s disappointing you chose to make comments about the food being of questionable safety – not at all consistent with what I’ve seen.

Very amusing write up Joe. I hope the knowledge that your adventures have brought a smile to your reader’s faces gives you some satisfaction. I know Korea and Japan are like visiting another planet. Some good advice i received in the past when travelling Asia is to write any destinations we are visiting down on paper in the local language, so it can be read by local taxi drivers, bus drivers.

I was traveling in China once, had a Chinese colleague of mine booked me a hotel in China in a place called Xiamen. I had arrived, jumped on the taxi and showed him the piece of paper with the hotel name and address. He kept doing a double take and frantically talking back to me in Mandarin. Alot of confusion ensued and he then decided to ring the hotel. The lovely lady on the phone explained to me my colleague booked a hotel 800 kilometers away (the business districts shared the same name). Ahh the fun of travel..

You always have such interesting adventures in your travels. This promises to be one you will always remember, and in your old age, you will recount it in a fond way I expect. Thanks for the laughs, and sorry for your Steve Martin-like “Trains Planes and Automobiles” journey.

I really don’t have any sympathy for people whining about such things. How do you think that we travel the world? Because some nice man in the clouds pays all our flights and hotel bills? I hate to burst your bubble but Formula 1 journalists have to earn their travelling expenses. You get a press pass by getting off your arse and making it happen. You get to the races by paying the bills, so rather than preaching to someone who is doing you a favour about taking the rough with the smooth, get out there and earn the couple of hundred quid you need to get to Silverstone. We have to raise £25,000 a year to pay our travel bills, and then we start paying Real World bill, mortgages etc etc.

Joe, I totally agree with your situation (I also work myself) but without knowing Jai’s situation I think you’re taking the high ground a little on this point. Some people, often through no fault of their own, really cannot afford a ticket to a Grand Prix, for many personal reasons (health, age, whatever). Jai did not express his point well (to say the least) but one cannot assume that everyone’s a whinger because they can’t pay the extortionate prices demanded by circuits these days.

Great post as usual. I can empathize with your laptop predicament as I spilled coffee on a laptop keyboard a few years ago, and I left it keyboard down on the desk in my hotel room. By mid-morning the following day, it had dried out a was fully functional again. I hope your coffee had no sugar or milk in it, and your blow dry efforts are successful.

I’m sorry you didn’t see the REAL Korea. It’s fantastic, although the beer is terrible. Max is a little better. You gotta go to the real local food places to get the good stuff. Next time go to Seoul. It’s more foreigner friendly.

Seoul is the real Korea? You’re kidding, right?
Go to places where you are the first foreigner they’ve seen-that’s the real Korea. I love those small towns.
It’s funny to see the look on their faces when I start talking to them in Korean…

They have been since day one.
Pisses me off, too. Now there won’t be any more F1 races, and I can’t justify spending the money to travel to another race. And this has been ANOTHER huge waste of our taxes.

This article, the one on pay drivers and the other about the current politics within F1 are three great reasons to read your blog. A better and broader insight into F1 than you can find elsewhere. All three articles, within one week and for free, you can’t beat that.

As many others have said a book about your travels and the tales that go with them would surely be a good seller.

Reminds me off a story my brother told me. In the 70’s plane loads of builders went off to work in Europe. Upon arrival in Amsterdam,the agent took my brother, and a bunch of lads to a recently closed brothel.He asked them to wait outside while they made the beds.
A van arrived, out popped a group of chippies, and unloaded planks of wood, they disappeare into the building, there was much sawing and banging as the lads waited outside for the beds to be made.

Joe, I remember when you used to hitch rides to races in team trucks and sleep in a tent or on the floor in a team hotel room. You must be getting soft in your old age. 🙂
You have all my sympathy many of the places we have to go for racing are terrible, but at least it makes you appreciate the good ones